Film Archive – Stranger than Fictionhttp://stfdocs.com
Exclusive documentary film screenings, hosted by Raphaela Neihausen and Thom Powers.Mon, 14 Aug 2017 11:00:52 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.544653552TOKYO IDOLShttp://stfdocs.com/films/tokyo-idols/
Tue, 04 Apr 2017 01:22:06 +0000http://stfdocs.com/?post_type=sm_films&p=5651“IDOLS” has fast become a phenomenon in Japan as girl bands and pop music permeate Japanese life. Tokyo Idols – an eye-opening film gets at the heart of a cultural phenomenon driven by an obsession with young female sexuality and internet popularity.

This ever growing phenomenon is told through Rio, a bona fide “Tokyo Idol” who takes us on her journey toward fame. Now meet her “brothers”: a group of adult middle aged male super fans (ages 35 – 50) who devote their lives to following her—in the virtual world and in real life. Once considered to be on the fringes of society, the “brothers” who gave up salaried jobs to pursue an interest in female idol culture have since blown up and have now become mainstream via the internet, illuminating the growing disconnect between men and women in hypermodern societies.

With her provocative look into the Japanese pop music industry and its focus on traditional beauty ideals, filmmaker Kyoko Miyake confronts the nature of gender power dynamics at work. As the female idols become younger and younger, Miyake offers a critique on the veil of internet fame and the new terms of engagement that are now playing out IRL around the globe.

]]>5651GET ME ROGER STONEhttp://stfdocs.com/films/get-me-roger-stone/
Tue, 04 Apr 2017 01:22:06 +0000http://stfdocs.com/?post_type=sm_films&p=5652The whole world was riveted by the rise of Donald Trump, but there is only one man who has been with the mogul since the beginning, plotting his improbable ascent. Ever since political consultant Roger Stone became the youngest person called before the Watergate grand jury, his career as a master in the dark arts of politics has intersected many momentous low points in modern political history.

Stone, the subject of the documentary, has had an unconventional political career from engineering political scandals to upending the establishment. His relationship to Trump began in the 1980s, when Stone began planting the seed for the businessman to enter politics, culminating in 2016 with one of the biggest election upsets in U.S. history. A chronicle of the infamous Roger Stone, Get Me Roger Stone gives an up-close look into his rise and the transformation of American Politics.

]]>5652THE GLEANERS & Ihttp://stfdocs.com/films/the-gleaners-i/
Tue, 04 Apr 2017 01:22:06 +0000http://stfdocs.com/?post_type=sm_films&p=5657Agnès Varda, Grande Dame of the French New Wave, made 2000’s most acclaimed non-fiction film-a self-described “wandering-road documentary.” Beginning with the famous Jean-François Millet painting of women gathering wheat left over from a harvest, she focuses her ever-seeking eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads us from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism. Varda’s own ruminations on her life as a filmmaker (a gleaner of sorts) give her a connection to her subjects that creates a touching human portrait that the L.A. Weekly deemed “a protest film that’s part social critique, part travelogue, but always an unsentimental celebration of human resilience.”
]]>5657A TIME FOR BURNINGhttp://stfdocs.com/films/time-for-burning/
Tue, 04 Apr 2017 01:22:06 +0000http://stfdocs.com/?post_type=sm_films&p=5650Called a “glowing beauty” by the New York Times, this seldom screened Academy-Award nominated documentary from 1967 is a landmark of the cinéma vérité movement. The idealist Lutheran pastor Rev William Yongdahl asks his all-white congregation in Omaha, Nebraska to reach out to black Lutherans. Some members of the congregation including Ray Christensen take up the cause, while others react negatively. Among the great characters in this film is the black barber Ernie Chambers who went on to become Nebraska’s longest serving state congressman. The film was originally rejected by major networks for being too controversial. Today it’s as stirring as ever.

This event is SOLD OUT. A limited number of tickets may be released to the rush-line, 15 minutes before showtime.

Chasing Coral taps into the collective will and wisdom of an ad man, a self-proclaimed coral nerd, top-notch camera designers, and renowned marine biologists as they invent the first time-lapse camera to record bleaching events as they happen. Unfortunately, the effort is anything but simple, and the team doggedly battles technical malfunctions and the force of nature in pursuit of their golden fleece: documenting the indisputable and tragic transformation below the waves. With its breathtaking photography, nail-biting suspense, and startling emotion, Chasing Coral is a dramatic revelation that won’t have audiences sitting idle for long.

The once free-spirited city of San Francisco is now a “Company Town,” a playground for tech moguls of the “sharing economy.” Airbnb is the biggest hotel, Uber privatizes transit. And now these companies want political power as well. Meanwhile, middle class and ethnic communities are driven out by gentrification, skyrocketing rents and evictions sparking a grassroots backlash. Can a grassroots movement overcome Citizens United and corporate power to win a crucial local election? Company Town is the story of an intense election campaign to determine the fate of the city at the epicenter of the digital revolution.

]]>5659THE B-SIDE: ELSA DORFMAN’S PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHYhttp://stfdocs.com/films/the-b-side/
Mon, 27 Mar 2017 16:37:31 +0000http://stfdocs.com/?post_type=sm_films&p=5656In The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography, Errol Morris explores the life and work of gifted portrait photographer, Elsa Dorfman. Dorfman found her medium in 1980: the larger-than-life Polaroid Land 20×24 camera. For the next thirty-five years she captured the “surfaces” of those who visited her Cambridge, Massachusetts studio: families, Beat poets, rock stars, and Harvard notables. With whimsical charm and wit, Dorfman gives Morris, her longtime friend, a tour of her backyard archive. As photographs begin to fade and Dorfman’s retirement looms, Morris’s film reminds us of a bygone era of analog photography and the extraordinary life of one of its champions.
]]>5656ONE OCTOBERhttp://stfdocs.com/films/one-october/
Mon, 27 Mar 2017 16:35:47 +0000http://stfdocs.com/?post_type=sm_films&p=5655New York City Premiere

Wednesday Night Special

In October 2008—during the last days of Barack Obama’s first bid for the presidency and the country’s worst economic disaster since the Great Depression—WFMU radio reporter Clay Pigeon takes to the streets of New York to talk to people about their lives, their dreams, and their relationship with a transforming city.

As part of what he calls a “radio experiment,” this transplanted Iowan roams the streets bearing a handheld recorder and a kindly probing nature: “Has he popped the question?” “When did you become a woman?” “When is the last time you’ve had a regular roof over your head?” “Do you love America?”
These revealing interviews are woven between vivid scenes of New York’s eccentric byways, which together reveal a city—and a nation—at a crossroads.

On screen the city unfolds as a densely choreographed stage for rituals marking the onset of autumn. City dwellers bask in the last days of sunshine, jack-o-lanterns begin to decorate the stoops, observant Jews toss breadcrumbs into the Hudson River on Rosh Hashanah, and Muslims mark the end of their Ramadan fast with Eid al-Fitr prayers and expressions of forgiveness.

Yet in this historic moment, major investment banks have failed and the Dow has tumbled. In nearly all neighborhoods the real estate explosion beckons the wealthy and displaces longtime residents with fewer means. And while Obama’s message of “Hope” seems to be everywhere, even optimistic voters wonder if anyone can truly change America’s course.

Lyrical, loving, and often humorous, One October is a city symphony that celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit and the dynamism of a multicultural metropolis. Seen from our current vantage point, the film is also a remarkable time capsule that presages the roiling political upheaval spreading across the country today.

In the wounded wake of the protests that ripped through Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015, the inaugural class of the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women began its senior year, which is chronicled with intense participation in STEP. Established in 2009, the public charter school’s mission is to send every one of its low-income students to college, but the pressures of home, community and fear of failure make for a nail-biting applications process. The empowering outlet for all that anxiety in Amanda Lipitz’s celebratory documentary is a step dance team seeking redemption in a state face-off.

If that sounds like The Fits meets Bring It On, you’re not far off, and it seems impossible that someone won’t snap up the rights to this uplifting success story and refashion it as a narrative teen pic. But that doesn’t mean this thoroughly enjoyable nonfiction account shouldn’t find a receptive audience eager to share the tears and triumphs of its spirited protagonists and their mentors.

Emotionally involving material is the key element to a good human-interest documentary, and Lipitz, a Baltimore native with a background in Broadway producing, has tapped into a great story here of adversity, struggle and elevating achievement.

]]>5654ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAILhttp://stfdocs.com/films/abacus/
Mon, 27 Mar 2017 16:31:54 +0000http://stfdocs.com/?post_type=sm_films&p=5653From acclaimed director Steve James (Hoop Dreams, The Interrupters, Life Itself), Abacus: Small Enough to Jail tells the incredible saga of the Chinese immigrant Sung family, owners of Abacus Federal Savings of Chinatown, New York. Accused of mortgage fraud by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., Abacus becomes the only U.S. bank to face criminal charges in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The indictment and subsequent trial forces the Sung family to defend themselves – and their bank’s legacy in the Chinatown community – over the course of a five-year legal battle.
]]>5653